“The noblest aim of FIGURES FOR A FAMILY PORTRAIT may be to gather all the poet’s knowledge, experience, and mystical realization into single, singular expression. Steve Lautermilch’s world is rendered as palimpsest; all moments are superimposed upon one another, even as they are flowing inward and outward at once. His observations are those of the precise visual artist, the patient photographer for whom each and every detail is of eager importance. Meditation is his means of discovery, his language ‘a fountain in spilling water’ that ‘shapes a double, mirror image’ of the All…No more genuine a poetry has ever been written.”—Fred Chappell